Listen to Keeley Valentino’s Self-Titled EP — Exclusive Premiere

Keeley Valentino will release her self-titled EP on Sept. 16, but she's giving readers of The Boot access to an exclusive stream of the disc right now.

The six-song project "has been several years in the making," Valentino says. She went into the studio in February to begin working on the disc, armed with about 22 songs, chosen out of all the music she'd written since her last record in 2009. But all of the tunes that made the EP were written in the last year.

"By the time we went in to record, I really felt like I had worked some stuff out, as a person, as a writer and as an artist," Valentino tells The Boot. "It felt like I had something new to say, a new perspective, and like I had given myself the time I needed to write organically and let the stories come to me."

'Keeley Valentino' begins on a peppy note with 'Everything in Between' before becoming more introspective on 'Little Things,' the EP's first single.

"I had been playing that song live already and just knew it belonged on a project," the Americana singer-songwriter says of the song. "When I moved back to the Bay Area, I went through a creative drought of sorts. 'Little Things' broke me out of that period and brought me back to a freshly inspired place."

'Love Will Come Around' feels very simple and pure -- almost like a late-'90s Jewel song -- but Valentino says the sound changed a lot during production.

"I had written it as a much softer tune with a syncopated rhythm. But when [producer] Matt [Mangano] heard it, he got excited and said he had an idea for a different approach. It went from a sadder-sounding song to one that feels really empowering. And I love that! Because I wanted to send a hopeful message."

The entire EP was recorded straight to tape, "which makes everything sound even more alive," Valentino says. It was also partially funded by friends, family and other entrepreneurs.

"We could have obviously used crowd-funding sites like PledgeMusic or Kickstarter. But I felt confident enough in the music and the art to offer equity to folks who had enough belief in me to fund the project," Valentino says. "It really has been a labor of love for so many. I'm so moved and humbled that I have people in my corner who are willing to take this journey with me."

And after all that work, Valentino says she's eager to get the EP out to the public.

“I just feel all the good kind of feelings about it -- excited, proud, lucky and most of all, thankful,” she says. "When you can free a part of yourself in making your art and it ends up touching someone else, you just feel like you're plugged right into the power source."